Harriet Tubman changed history with bravery

By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

Almost 100 years after her death, there's a new fascination with Harriet Tubman. Maryland lawmakers are debating whether to replace a statue in the U.S. Capitol with one of the Underground Railroad "conductor" and Union spy. Visitor centers are in the works in Maryland and New York. In June, a conference will delve into her story.

From the collection of Elizabeth Smith Miller and Anne Fitzhugh Miller via Library of Congress

Harriet Tubman, in this photo from around 1911, was an abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the American Civil War. She helped free hundreds of slaves.

From the collection of Elizabeth Smith Miller and Anne Fitzhugh Miller via Library of Congress

Harriet Tubman, in this photo from around 1911, was an abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the American Civil War. She helped free hundreds of slaves.

Admirers hail the 5-foot-2 illiterate escaped slave for guiding hundreds to freedom, advising Civil War leaders, nursing war wounded and working as an equal alongside powerful men.

"You have this petite woman, but yet she has such a big voice in the world," says Barbara Tagger, a National Park Service historian.

Tagger is moving temporarily from her Atlanta base to the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore to oversee the opening of a Tubman visitor center in March 2013, the 100th anniversary of Tubman's death. A similar site is planned for Auburn, N.Y., where Tubman lived for 54 years.

What's getting attention now, though, is a debate between Maryland state lawmakers over replacing a statue of patriot John Hanson in the U.S. Capitol with one of Tubman. Each state is represented by two figures in National Statuary Hall.

"As a woman of color myself — I'm Asian-American — I think it reflects the diversity in our state," says Maryland Delegate Susan Lee, a Democrat who is chief sponsor of a bill to send a Tubman statue to the Capitol.

Civil Rights Movement

A statue of Hanson, president of the Continental Congress from 1781 to 1782 under the Articles of Confederation, has stood in the U.S. Capitol for 108 years. In late March, the Maryland state Senate proposed legislation directing the state to ask Congress to allow Maryland to have three statues in National Statuary Hall.

State Sen. Thomas McLain Middleton, a Democrat descended from Hanson's brother, said he admires Tubman's contributions, but removing Hanson's statue would be wrong.

By Matthew S. Gunby, for USA TODAY

Wilbur Jackson, left, and Charles E.T. Ross, a descendant of Harriet Tubman, stand at the Bazzle Methodist Episcopal Church near Cambridge, Md., where Tubman's family worshiped in the mid-1800's.

"She belongs in the pantheon of great American heroes," says Eastern Shore historian John Creighton, of the Choptank Region History Network, which hosts a monthly Tubman discussion.

"She was born a girl; she was born enslaved; she was born an African-American; she never learned to read or write; and she had this debilitating injury," Creighton said. "When you add it all up, it's an incredible life."

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Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 in Dorchester County, Md., most historians believe. She was one of eight children of Ben Ross and Harriet "Rit" Green.

One day when she was 12 or 13, an overseer in a dry-goods store threw a 2-pound weight at a young male slave. Tubman jumped to protect the slave, and the weight hit her in the head. For the rest of her life, she suffered sleeping spells. "She would always believe that was God's way of forcing her to rest," Tubman's great-great-great-great-nephew, Charles E.T. Ross of Cambridge, Md., says he was told by his grandfather.

In 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man. When her owner died in 1849, she fled to Philadelphia. She told biographer Sarah Bradford that when she crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, "The sun came like gold through the tree and over the field, and I felt like I was in heaven."

Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore to free others. If fugitives got cold feet, she threatened to shoot them, says Wilbur Jackson, 80, of Cambridge, whose family believes they are Tubman descendants.

On one return trip, she learned John Tubman had taken another wife.

By the Civil War, Tubman was known among prominent abolitionists, including William Seward, a senator from New York who became President Lincoln's secretary of State. "They love her dry wit," says Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. Seward sold Tubman property in Auburn, N.Y., for a small price, and she moved there with her parents in 1859.

John Andrew, Massachusetts' abolitionist governor, recruited Tubman to help ex-slaves in Port Royal, S.C. Tubman set up a "wash house" where she and freed female slaves washed, sewed and baked for Union soldiers. "It was a great source of pride for her," Larson says.

Generals and other military leaders sought Tubman's advice in stealth and organization. In one 1863 mission, Tubman led Col. James Montgomery on a successful raid along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman and several hundred soldiers freed about 750 slaves.

In 1865, she returned to Auburn. Four years later she married Nelson Davis, a volunteer in the 8th United States Colored Regiment. Despite financial troubles, she took in orphaned children, the sick and disabled. In 1896, she purchased 25 acres to establish the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged. She died in 1913.

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